I know its always great to see nice and attractive football but sometimes football doesn’t always give us that. Sometimes to win, you have to get down and dirty.

People were up in arms that Brazil won last night. They caused too many fouls, they singled out James Rodriguez for some of harsh treatment and that the refereeing officials were biased towards the hosts.

To be honest, football fans love conspiracy theories but here is the truth the best team on the night won.

Brazil scored an early goal after seven minutes and that kind of killed the game a bit. Brazil aren’t the first to do this, Argentina did it against Bosnia & Herzegovina in their opening match. Football is all about results and win you reach the quarter-final stage of a World Cup you will do anything for victory. The football was still end to end but it was often stopped with fouls.

Brazil played to their squads strengths and minimised the strengths of the Colombians. Now that meant quite a bit of long balls and niggling fouls, and some of us aren’t used to that from ‘A Seleção’. Although the Brazilians have had teams like this in the past with varied success.

Every time the World Cup comes along the Brazil squad get compared to that of 1970. Its unfair and not very helpful. Different generations give you different personnel, styles, opponents and tactics. The game has evolved, whether we like it or not.

Now for all of you that have attacked Brazil for their performances, mainly last nights, what about Colombia?

I’ve loved watching ‘Los Cafeteros’ this summer. But last night they were off the boil. They couldn’t adapt their style to counter the Brazilian tactics. Juan Guillermo Cuadrado wasn’t the same player, making more mistakes and mistimed passes in last nights game than he has all tournament. The forwards didn’t do enough to pressurise the Brazilian defenders and they relied too much on James Rodriguez.

I said yesterday that the Colombian side had to get the occasion out of their heads and keep all focus on the game. But that didn’t happen, at times they were like rabbits caught in headlights. The defending at the corner for Brazil’s opening goal was awful and nearly non-existent. But you don’t hear many people talking about that.

The officials weren’t the best, more cards should have been shown and that should have happened sooner. That would have helped protect James and Neymar from wayward fouls. The Brazilian wall that didn’t adhere to the foam should have been punished further.

But here’s the thing. The main decisions were all spot on. The ref and his team were right when they cancelled out a Colombian goal for being offside, James did concede a free-kick which led to the second goal (although he shouldn’t have been booked) and it was a penalty for Colombia. Oh and whilst we discuss the penalty, the ref was right not to send off Julio Cesar as he wasn’t last man (David Luiz was covering), it wasn’t an obvious goalscoring opportunity (Colombian player would struggle to catch that ball) and it wasn’t a violent challenge.

Why are we not lauding David Luiz for his free-kick? It was a stunning goal, worthy of any World Cup match. To strike that with the inside of his foot and get the power, pace and movement was majestic. Yet because it was scored by ‘that clown’ Luiz it seems to be forgotten about.

Look at the stats. Yes Brazil did commit the most amount of fouls but they also had most possession, most shots, most shots on target and importantly scored two goals to the Colombia’s one.

As I’ve said the treatment on James Rodriguez was pretty harsh and it went beyond the line quite a few times. But the same can be said for Neymar, and not just in the Colombian game either. Some of the tackles on the Brazilian number ten this summer has been gruesome. The golden boy for his nation is now out of the World Cup with a broken bone in his back. Camilo Zuniga’s challenge wasn’t needed and it was very cynical. For those that questioned the ref, lets no forget that he didn’t give a free-kick or give out a card for that challenge.

I don’t blame Zuniga, it was a niggly game and the Brazilians dished out as much as they got. My issue is with the fans on twitter who were gloating about the injury, saying Neymar either deserved it or was faking. The player has a broken bone in his back for crying out loud. You can see it was a bad challenge and the twenty-two year old was in agony.

Getting back to the start, as I said, football is all about the end result. If Brazil win this competition, then Luiz Felipe Scolari will have achieved the ultimate goal, winning the World Cup in Brazil!

Of course it can happen, they are in the final four after all and for me no one has stood out at this tournament. But the next game will see Brazil take on Germany without Neymar and the suspended Thiago Silva, if they can overcome that challenge then they might meet their rivals Argentina in one hell of a final!

This has been a fantastic World Cup, let that continue all the way to July the thirteenth.

Posted on July 5th, 2014 by scott
Filed under: Article, World Cup